GEITNER SIMMONS has some thoughts on the whole “northern secession” issue.

Meanwhile, this John Tabin column examines the phenomenon of “South Park Republicans.” Is Arnold one?

UPDATE: Porphyrogenitus notes the West Virginia problem that might result from secession.

RED TED has a nice post on the essence of the Iraq question, from a responsible anti-war perspective:

Lets take the Bush team at their implied pre-war word. Lets assume that the long-term goal of the war is indeed to create a vibrant democracy on the banks of the Euphrates. Lets pass on the questions of international law, wrap ourselves in the UN resolutions, and deny our political goals even as we work to fulfil them. How then should we judge policy in Iraq and how then should we suggest alternatives.

For the record, I said pre-war and I say again now, that this is a high-risk strategy, that if it works it will work wonderfully, and that I hope that it does work. I do believe in the contagion of liberty, it has worked in the past and it will work in the future. The long term goals are positive despite the cynical way that they were implemented.

But are the policies currently being pursued on the ground in Iraq working to further and achieve those democratic goals? There I just do not know the answer. The news I see is fragmented and politicized. I have seen a number of accounts of Iraqis welcoming American troops, of setting up new local institutions, there are now hundreds of newspapers where once there were only a few state-run newspapers. So some of the infrastructure of a democratic society is beginning to appear. Iraq was one of the more secular states in the Middle East and it was also one of the more entrepreneurial. There are a few early signs that Iraq might well become a powerhouse.

There is also bad news – not just the continuing guerilla attacks in the middle of the country. Those are bound to continue as long as a few people are willing to organize them and the bulk of the Iraqi people is not willing to shame and condemn them. Beyond that, it appears that the war planning staff forgot to plan for peace – a damning indictment of the whole idea that the subtext of the war was building a democratic society. . . .

If I were giving advice to Democratic strategists, it would be to focus on the implementation of the post-war policy in Iraq. Argue from administrative competence, argue against good-ole-boy contracting, argue against people who over commit the nation without a plan, and make SURE that you have a plan yourself.

Read the whole thing. I’d like to see more along these lines. So far, it looks as if Howard Dean is taking this tack.

SYLVAIN GALINEAU has a post on the anti-anti-Americans in France.

DONALD WALTER, the federal judge whose piece on Iraq I posted here last week, now has an oped on the same topic in the New York Post. Nice to see that this stuff is making it into the mainstream media. Then there’s this piece by Jack Kelly:

Last week, I covered the return to Pittsburgh from Iraq of a Marine reserve military police company. These Marines made the march of Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division, and spent the bulk of the postwar period escorting convoys between Basra and Najaf. Each of the seven Marines I interviewed said that more than 90 percent of the Iraqis they encountered were friendly.

The accounts of these Marines square with those of most other servicemen returned from Iraq, and with my own experiences as a reporter embedded with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in western Iraq, and with the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad. But it’s a story you hardly ever hear on the evening news.

Iraq is a dangerous place. Saddam Hussein is still at large, as are thousands of his diehard supporters. They’ve been joined by hundreds, perhaps thousands of foreign terrorists. Though these “insurgents” cannot challenge the U.S. military for control of any part of the country, they’ll be able to conduct remote ambushes and terror bombings for months to come.

But viewed in historical perspective, things in Iraq are pretty good, and getting better. The insurgents are a tiny — and dwindling — minority. Most of the country is at peace. Nobody is starving. Signs of reviving economic activity are everywhere. In no country in the Arab world are Americans as popular as they are in Iraq.

Some more of those returning-soldier accounts that David Adesnik was asking for. And they do all seem consistent with the reports of other non-media observers, and even those of some returning reporters now. Nice to see a little perspective starting to appear.

UPDATE: Reader John MacDonald emails:

Dan Rather was on 60 minutes II yesterday from Baghdad.The scene of traffic moving behind him was revealing in its normalcy.If the media persists in focusing mostly on the negatives they are going to lose their credibility.The great unwashed aren’t total idiots.

Indeed. Meanwhile Howard Veit emails that Bush is the idiot:

Bush is committing political suicide by not countering the media assault on the Iraq War. All he’d have to do is read aloud one letter per day from a soldier over there. He won’t do it or hasn’t the moxie to do it. Those of us who looked at the last election as one between two mediocre men are fearful that we were right. It is too stupid for words to allow a Left Wing Media to destroy this presidency but it is happening before our eyes. Bush is doing nothing to stop it. And all he’d have to do is read one letter per day from the web. You tell me, is that stupid or not?

Yeah, the vaunted White House spin machine seems to have been stuck between cycles on this one.

SPOONS THINKS that General Shelton should back up his charges against Wesley Clark:

I think it’s pretty clear that Shelton either said far too much, or far too little. If he wanted to be discreet, he could easily have brushed off the question. If, on the other hand, he wanted to tell why he thinks Clark is a bad guy, he could have backed up his statement with details and facts. Instead, he made a vague, ambiguous allegation that Clark lacked integrity and character.

I think, though, that Spoons is wrong to connect this with John Burns’ statements about Iraq. Shelton made an unspecified charge against a named person in the context of a converstation about that person. Burns made a specific charge against an unnamed person, in the context of a more general discussion of the media and Iraq. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think he should name the offender — I do — but it’s not the same thing. Shelton might be accused of character assassination, but Burns, not having named the person, can’t be.

RICHARD MINITER offers a lengthy summary of evidence for an Iraq / Al Qaeda connection.

HERE’S AN INTERVIEW WITH REP. JIM MARSHALL (D-GA), about media coverage of Iraq:

MARSHALL: Right. It’s Vietnam (search) deja vu. I was a recon sergeant in Vietnam and went through this process of trying to deal with a guerrilla war. It is a very difficult thing to do and could be that things weren’t going well.

Well, I came away with the impression that things are going well. Certainly a good bit better than seems to me, the overall American seems to thinks.

And the important thing is for Americans to understand that the news media tends to dwell on the negative. It happens in your own hometown, the typical TV show, the typical newspaper article focuses on murders and rapes. And that’s what you’re seeing right now. What you don’t see is the progress. . . .

MARSHALL: Well, it is a guerrilla war. And if we don’t appear to have resolve, then Iraqis are going to be a lot less likely to cooperate with us, a lot less likely to be willingly in the Army and willingly out there, going after the guerrillas.

We can’t force freedom on the Iraqis. The Iraqis have to take it for themselves. They can distinguish one from another. We can’t do that. We can’t read the street signs. We don’t know the language. They do. They can go in there and deal with this guerrilla situation.

It’s not like Vietnam. In Vietnam, you had the Chinese and Russians…

HUME: Right. Behind them.

MARSHALL: Behind them. You don’t have anything like that here. We can take care of this as long as the Iraqis step forward. They’re less likely to step forward if we’re pessimistic. We’re more likely to be pessimistic if we’re getting a lot of negative news coverage. And that’s the connection.

I’d be interested in hearing more details about how the CPA is doing. And I’d like to know what ever happened to the Oil Trust idea.

Meanwhile here’s a roundup of other commentary on the negative slant from Iraq.

THE GUANTANAMO ESPIONAGE PROBE has expanded to encompass a third suspect. This is very troubling, and makes you wonder who’s doing security clearances.

Hey, but at least they’re making sure there are no openly-gay people in the military!

I DIDN’T WATCH THE CALIFORNIA DEBATE, but there’s lots of information on how it went at PrestoPundit, Kausfiles, and Bee serial-edited-Web-columnist and former blogger Daniel Weintraub.

Meanwhile, Republicans are figuring out something I’ve been saying all along: Bush is vulnerable in 2004.

UPDATE: Here’s Howard Kurtz’s take on the debate. And yes, I was reading Neal Stephenson’s new novel instead. I’m up to page 112, and so far it’s great although he’s still warming up.

“WILL SADDAM’S BIGGEST SUCK-UP please come forward?” I agree with Andrew Sullivan and Jack Shafer on this.

NO, I’M NOT DYING of some dreadful disease. My “stop and smell the flowers” advice stems from a couple of things. One is that, sadly, I know some people who are — and even beyond that, quite a few friends and family have had various surgeries lately, putting such things on my mind. The other is my sense that the Blogosphere — like the journalistic and political worlds generally — is too het up. (See this Roger Simon post for more.) And I realized after the second anniversary of September 11 that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and pacing is required.

IT REALLY WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY, so I took the laptop to the patio at the Downtown Grill and Brewery (free wireless Internet!) and sat outside and drank coffee while I wrote a massive post for the MSNBC site tomorrow, on the death penalty and Scott Turow’s new book, Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty.

Regular InstaPundit readers won’t be surprised to learn that I’m not upset with the morality of the death penalty per se, but rather regard it as another big government program that doesn’t work very well. I have a few comments on social context, crime-fighting in general, and more, but you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to read them.

In the meantime, I suggest that you seize the opportunity to enjoy life. If you’re reading this, you’re probably not in prison, or on Death Row. If you were either of those things, your everyday life would seem pretty damn great. Keep that in mind. I will — I’ll be reading Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, which came today. Woohoo!

And, hey, at least I don’t have this guy’s problems! But that’s because I don’t have a butler. And I drink Sumatra Mandheling. Otherwise, there’s a shocking similarity.

CHRIS MOONEY has a new blog! Check it out.

BRIAN CARNELL ASKS: Who is lying — Michael Moore, or Wesley Clark?

My money’s on Moore, for obvious reasons, but you never know.

UPDATE: Then again, Clark has issues too, apparently. Maybe we shouldn’t believe either of them?

FIGHT OVARIAN CANCER: I’m willing to do my part to prevent this scourge. (Via GruntDoc).

IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY, but I had too much work to let me run off to the mountains like last week, so I had to settle for a walk around campus. It’s such a beautiful day that it wasn’t too bad a second choice.

I tried to really focus on how the campus is different from when I was in college a bit over 20 years ago. Some things aren’t that different — fashions have come full circle in many departments. The student body, which was then only slightly more female than male, is now considerably more so — I haven’t seen numbers, but I’ve heard that it’s more than 60% female and just walking around that looks plausible. And nearly every one of the female students seems to be talking on a cellphone as she walks. (The men seldom are, so I guess the women are talking to one another).

The population is far more diverse. In particular, there are far more asians — both Americans of asian descent, and in particular actual student-visa asians from China, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. I suspect that the same trends apply to most universities.

For those who want to see more pictures (and there are generally some Knoxville expats, or UT alumni, who do), click here, here, here and here.

HERE’S MORE FIRSTHAND REPORTING, this about how Al Jazeera is being received in Iraq.

HERE’S A COLUMN by the Los Angeles Times’ Tim Rutten on the Bee blog brouhaha.

ACCOUNTABILITY DEMANDS CONSEQUENCES. Bill Clinton said it, but the NASA safety board is actually living it, resigning in light of criticism over the Columbia accident.

That’s nine more than resigned from the FBI or CIA after 9/11.

LOOTING UPDATE: When you consider all the attention that Enron got in Europe, it’s interesting that scandals like this one don’t get much attention in the United States:

Four years after a sleaze row destroyed the previous European Commission, prompting its unprecedented mass resignation, the nightmare has returned to haunt its successor. . . .

The case, which was described as the “looting” of Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, uncovered a catalogue of failings and provoked calls for the Spanish commissioner Pedro Solbes Mira – who is ultimately responsible for Eurostat – to resign. . . .

In 1999 the previous Commission was forced to resign en masse after an inquiry concluded it was “becoming difficult to find anyone who has even the slightest sense of responsib-ility”. Four years later no one seems willing to take the rap.

There are differences between the cases, however. In 1999 the allegations were directed against commissioners, notably Edith Cresson who hired her dentist as a scientific adviser.

Maybe this sort of thing just isn’t news because it’s so common?

/ STRASBOURG – A fresh investigation by the EU anti-fraud office, Olaf, has been launched into the European Commission’s technology directorate over alleged systematic theft by officials, the Daily Telegraph has reported.

This contradicts claims made by the Commission yesterday (23 September) that financial irregularities were only present in the EU statistical office, Eurostat.

A confidential letter sent to Commission vice-president Neil Kinnock, seen by the Daily Telegraph, claimed the group’s health unit, C4, had skimmed million of euros through contracts with Greek companies, and claims that alleged abuses at Eurostat were “almost insignificant” by comparison.

The newspaper says that the projects were titled Childcare, Citation, e-Remedy, HealthMarket, D-lab and Pharma among others.

It appears that Unit C4 used “friendly evaluators”, who steered contracts to companies in which they had a financial interest.

I seem to remember a lot of Euro-preening about the superiority of “European-style” capitalism back when Enron was in the news. Is this what they were talking about?

MATT WELCH HAS OBSERVATIONS on the rather unbecoming whining from the Bee’s ombudsman. People disagree with him! The horror!

Heh. He should have to read my email. . . .

DON’T MISS THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES — now with 100% more socialist realism!

Meanwhile Winds of Change has a very useful (and link-rich) roundup of what’s going on in the ‘stans.

A GOOD START TO THE DAY: In yesterday’s mail was a “test pressing” of a CD rerelease by my favorite 1980s rock ‘n’ roll band, The Rainmakers. It’s their first album, but I never got it on CD. I saw them in a hell of a show in Washington, double-billed with the then-unknown Steve Earle, for 5 bucks. (Mickey Kaus was at that show, too, but I didn’t know it at the time). And driving in to work as the fog lifted from the lake along Cherokee Boulevard, it was just too pretty not to take a picture. So, I did.

Now I’m in the office, going through my clogged inbox while Let My People Go-Go plays in the background. Not as nice as the drive in, but not bad.

You’ve got to enjoy stuff like this, because it’s what life’s about. I always knew that, to a degree, but with each passing year that knowledge gets closer to the bone.

UPDATE: You can stream some of the Rainmakers’ tunes here and even see a few videos. And Rainmakers frontman Bob Walkenhorst has a solo album out, though I haven’t heard it yet.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And while I’m mentioning favorite ’80s rock and roll bands, you might want to check out the White Animals’ website. And listen to “Ecstasy,” a song that defines an era.

HERE’S INTERESTING NEWS:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 23 — After five months of foreign military occupation and the ouster of Saddam Hussein, nearly two-thirds of Baghdad residents believe that the removal of the Iraqi dictator has been worth the hardships they have been forced to endure, a new Gallup poll shows.

Despite the systemic collapse of government and civic institutions, a wave of looting and violence, and shortages of water and electricity, 67 percent of 1,178 Iraqis told a Gallup survey team that within five years, their lives would be better than before the American and British invasion.

Hmm. Polls are iffy, and polls in former dictatorships moreso. On the other hand, things are better elsewhere in the country, suggesting that there might actually be more enthusiasm overall. Ambit has links to other polls from Iraq, showing generally similar sentiments.

Wonder if this will get as much prominence on the evening news as a domestic poll showing that 66% of Americans disapproved of the war would. . . .?

UPDATE: Reader Ben Dolfin adds an interesting gloss:

You make a good point about the accuracy of polls in former dictatorships, but you missed an interesting clue. Based on who they pander too with their answers we can tell they know who is in charge and who will be in charge for the forseeable future. I’d be more worried if they still wanted to sacrifice their blood and souls for Saddam, that’d mean they think he’ll be back in charge soon.

So if they’re telling the truth then it’s a good thing, and if they’re lying to us at least they are kissing our butt instead of Saddam’s.

Good point.

BILL HOBBS looks at the seamy side of the record industry. And scroll up for some close readings of speeches by Bush and Rice.